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Home  »  Poems of Places An Anthology in 31 Volumes  »  A Picture at Newstead

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, ed. Poems of Places: An Anthology in 31 Volumes.
England: Vols. I–IV. 1876–79.

Newstead Abbey

A Picture at Newstead

By Matthew Arnold (1822–1888)

WHAT made my heart, at Newstead, fullest swell?

’T was not the thought of Byron, of his cry

Stormily sweet, his Titan agony;

It was the sight of that Lord Arundel

Who struck, in heat, the child he loved so well,

And the child’s reason flickered, and did die.

Painted (he willed it) in the gallery

They hang; the picture doth the story tell.

Behold the stern, mailed father, staff in hand!

The little fair-haired son, with vacant gaze,

Where no more lights of sense or knowledge are!

Methinks the woe which made that father stand

Baring his dumb remorse to future days

Was woe than Byron’s woe more tragic far.